Surf mama
'Out of the kitchen and into the surf'
Surf Mama is part travel memoir, part portrait of the artist as a surf chick, it's a book about realising that you're having a mid life crisis for a reason..... maybe I wasn't meant to spend the rest of my life as an earth mother in an Irish fishing village, maybe it was time to deconstruct the nest I'd spent so long building, swap the apron for a pair of board shorts and paddle out into the ocean and prove to the macho surf world of the noughties that women could surf.
Except of course I couldn't. And I was 42, I'd never seen the inside of a gym, and I was terrified of waves ....... but I never let details get in the way of a plan.
After a life of traveling, painting and performing with the infamous Neo Naturists, Wilma Johnson ended up in an isolated fishing village in Ireland playing earth mother to her three children.Then she had a revelation on the westernmost beach in Europe - she wanted to be a surfer.
She didn't let the fact that she was 42 and had never done any sport in her life stand in her way......
" She casts a wry, often hilarious eye on her world, setting the mundane against the bigger picture of desire, the past, existential possibilities, wine, espressos and surf.... She's a true artist and her book paints a brightpicture of surfing from an entirely different angle'
Surfer's Path
Hardback illustrated version 2011 Beautiful Books
Paperback 2014 Summersdale
